Documentary Festival CPH.DOX Launches With a Special Focus On Ukraine

Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival CPH:DOX, which will be held in-person for its third year, is taking a stand with the Ukrainian people with a special program of seven carefully curated films.

Spirits may be high in the Danish capital at the prospect of finally having a live event after two editions that were pushed online due to the COVID-19 pandemic but, as the fest’s artistic director Niklas Engstrøm stressed, “All our thoughts go to Ukraine and the many refugees who are currently being forced to leave their homeland.”

As the event’s programmer, Mads Mikkelsen, explained to VarietyWhen they closed the program in January, organizers had already assembled a selection films from or about Ukraine. “But, of course, everything changed on February 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Up to the last minute, we added more films because we felt we could do something to help understand the situation and the recent history of Ukraine since 2014,” said Mikkelsen.

These are late additions “Maidan” (2014), Sergei Loznitsa’s powerful historical fresco of the events of Maidan Square in 2014, Alina Gorlova’s “This Rain Never Stops”(2019), A story about a family who flees war-torn Syria only for it to be rescued by war-torn Ukraine. “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange”(2020) By Iryna Silyk, a fan favorite from Berlin and Sundance.

The latter, which tells the story of a mother and her two daughters who rally around their shared passion for filmmaking as war rages around them, was first screened at the festival’s 2020 online edition, and was an obvious candidate for the special Ukraine selection, according to Mikkelsen.

“ ‘The Earth Is Blue as an Orange’ is definitely a film that adds to the understanding of the recent history of Ukraine,”Variety was informed by him. “It is also a beautiful film, paradoxically, about a young mother and her two daughters who turn to filmmaking to relieve the stress of living in a war zone – it’s a beautiful testament to the creative spirit of people who find some sense of hope even in the darkest of times.”

The Ukraine Focus Program was added to last minute “Novorossiya” (literally “New Russia”) by Italian duo Enrico Parenti and Luca Gennari, described as a panoramic, fresco-like picture of Eastern Ukraine’s pro-Russians separatists.

“It’s a very up-to-date documentation of the mentality that paved the way for Putin’s ambitions to move into Ukraine. We meet a diverse cast of characters including some of the young kids in the region, and we see how nation-building takes place, how the narrative is a strong component of the sense of national identity, and how it is misused to create a sense of patriotism that is a condition for this kind of invasion.”

One of the films that was selected in Ukraine earlier were “A House Made of Splinters,”It was awarded the top prize at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. “The Treasures of Crimea”Oeke Hoogendijk, a Dutch filmmaker, has created a documentary about a collection containing historical artifacts from Ukraine that was left behind in an Amsterdam museum. “Outside”Olha Zhurba (Ukrainian director)

She is best known for her shorts “Dad’s Sneakers” (2021), Zhurba is currently in Ukraine filming the conflict and will not be attending the film’s world premiere in Copenhagen. “Outside”Roma is a story about a young orphan from Roma who became a mascot in the pro-democracy revolution of Ukraine. Zhurba tracks him for seven years using her camera and telephone conversations.

“The complexity of this character echoes the complexity of modern Ukraine – the inner tensions, the longing for something different, the longing for stability and for an actual future,”Mikkelsen recently rewatched it and stated that he had a completely new perspective on the film after the Russian invasion.

On “A House Made of Splinters,” a documentary set in a children’s shelter in Eastern Ukraine, Mikkelsen said he was hit by the realization that the orphanage is located less than 100 kilometers from the Russian border. “I can only imagine how the situation there has gone from bad to worse, and it’s already bad. It’s heartbreaking, but again it’s all the more important that these kinds of films remind us of the destructive consequences of war, how it affects children and how the bitter seeds are somehow planted in these young minds,”He stated.

Mikkelsen expressed a positive view and said that he was amazed by the amount of courage emanating from the films. “These are films that are made in a war zone; they made these films to give the rest of us an understanding of what’s going on. It kind of makes me grateful,”He concluded.

CPH:DOX is now open and will run through April 3, in and around Copenhagen. Mini-festivals in collaboration with local partners will be held across Denmark’s cities. From April 1-10, a selection of Danish films will be available for streaming on YouTube.